After 5: Kings of the Castle

There are 50 acres near Lead Hill, Ark., where you can cross the Atlantic Ocean, set foot in 13th-century France and see a medieval castle take shape before your eyes.

Ozark Medieval Fortress is a reproduction of a castle, but workers are only using tools that were available during the 1200s to build the massive fortress.

The 20-year construction project is the dream of Jean-Marc and Solange Mirat, a French couple who retired to rural Arkansas 20 years ago to be closer to their only daughter.

They visited a castle built by Frenchman Michel Guyot in September 2008 and thought their Ozarks land might be suitable for a similar site. They sold Guyot a portion of their land, and he’s now serving as general contractor of the medieval castle in America – the first of its kind, organizers say.

Lead Hill castle manager Julie Sonveau says the area resembles the “middle-mountain region of France. The mountains are so old they’re rounded off.”

A team of 25 workers began building in June 2009, and the castle site is set to offer guided tours May 1.

Motte and bailey model
On Springfield Business Journal’s tour in advance of opening day, a massive Belgian horse named Honey greets us at the construction site. Honey, the means of hauling stone from the on-site quarry, is quickly replaced by tour guide Sonveau.

Our first stop on the trail is a model of a motte and bailey castle, the style of castle under construction. Motte and bailey castles consist of two mounds, surrounded by a moat, with a watchtower at the top of the higher mound and a courtyard, barracks and livestock usually on the other mound, Sonveau explains.

“The people who lived in that area, they needed some defense fast,” she adds. “They’d pop up one of these defensive towers. It would be big enough that the lord would live in the middle level and the guard would stay on top and they could see if someone was coming to attack.”

Sonveau next shows us where 13th century gardening will be performed and where period-specific clothes and other textiles will be made. Sonveau says Tulsa, Okla.-area students will volunteer their time in May to plant in the garden. “People can come out and work on weekends, on vacations,” Sonveau says. “They can help participate in the project and classes as well.”

Split stone
Stone to build the castle walls is quarried on-site from under the castle ground. Visitors on the tour can split one of the mighty rocks, right alongside the workers.

“We’ve got some stones that we’ve laid in these towers that are 12 feet long, about 4 to 6 inches thick,” says mason Billy Williams, of Jasper, Ark. “It took six or eight of us to move them. It’s not going anywhere.”

Sonveau says the process for splitting the stones is not trial-and-error but an exact science.

“You need two people holding two different kinds of sledge hammers,” says Sonveau, adding that one of the hammers doesn’t exist in the United States and is being made on-site by second-generation and castle blacksmith Rocky Horton.

We passed on trying our hand at splitting a stone.

From the quarry, we enter the main castle gate.

Inside sits a catapult that soon will be ready to use, Horton’s blacksmith shop, carpenter stations, pottery and a children’s stone-carving station. Workers provide constant background noise – the clanking of hammer on stone, the horse’s occasional snort and Horton’s pounding of a tool in his blacksmith shop – as we enter the castle space.

Horton prepares several stakes to be driven into the wall mortar. He stokes his fire with his bellows by foot pedal, heating it to about 1,500 F by his best guess, and then shapes one end of a long piece of metal into a point. Horton cools the stake by dipping it into his water trough, which, like most of the tools on the castle grounds, he built.

Atop the hill, masons build the interior castle walls.

Sonveau says most of the workers have learned of the castle by word of mouth and online, at www.ozarkmedievalfortress.com, bringing a bit of irony to the effort.

“It’s not your standard masonry job,” says Ryan Reed, of St. Joseph. “I came out and worked for a couple of days on the king’s tower and it just kind of stuck.”

Williams doubts he’ll ever have an opportunity like this again.

“I don’t know anybody that’s ever done anything like this,” he says.